The chaos of the Ancients' Era left the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths shattered. Its laws were incomplete, the path to immortality decayed. Yet, pockets of immense, dormant power persisted. These were the Forbidden Zones, realms isolated by the world’s own fractured rules, where survivors from a more glorious age slumbered. They were relics of the Immortal Ancient Era, damaged true immortals, and reclusive giants—the most concentrated assembly of supreme beings left.
When the cataclysm arrived, when the foreign and terrifying Other Realm launched its invasion, these guardians did not stir. From their secluded sanctuaries, they watched the devastation unfold in silence. Their inaction became the war’s greatest mystery. What could make such powerful entities turn their backs on the very world they once swore to protect?
Betrayal's Bitter Legacy
The founders of the three greatest Forbidden Zones were not native to this land. They were Xianwang (仙王), immortal kings dispatched from the higher Immortal Domain as reinforcements during an ancient war against the dark creatures. They fought desperately, sacrificing everything for victory. Their reward was not honor, but suspicion. Merely for having engaged the darkness, they were branded as contaminated, exiled from their home. The final blow was not from an enemy’s blade, but from their own kin. The Immortal Domain used their clans and families as bargaining chips to force their submission. The protectors became the persecuted.
Treachery, however, was not limited to distant realms. Within the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, so-called eternal families and sects, desperate for survival, made secret pacts with the Other Realm. They traded information, promised non-aggression, and even betrayed the locations of their own defenders. Imagine fighting on the front lines, only to feel a knife slide between your ribs from behind. Imagine watching a comrade fall, and hearing the whispers of those already dividing his spoils. When sacrifice begets betrayal, and guardianship earns only scorn, what is left? The logical, if agonizing, conclusion is withdrawal. They carved out their territories, severed their ties, and resolved to watch the realm’s fate with detached indifference.
This was not mere cowardice. It was the ultimate consequence of trust utterly destroyed. For these ancient beings, the physical wounds of battle had long healed. The psychological scars inflicted by those they saved, however, never faded. Their silence was a monument to that betrayal, a permanent scar across the conscience of the world they left behind. To ask for their help was to ask them to ignore a history written in their own blood and the ashes of their hopes.
A Greater Cataclysm Awaits
Not all within the Forbidden Zones were motivated solely by past grievances. Some viewed the conflict with the Other Realm with profound detachment, their gaze fixed on a far more terrifying horizon. These were often survivors of the cataclysmic wars within the Realm Sea, beings with shattered true forms or who carried the weight of epoch-spanning vendettas. They established their sanctuaries not out of spite, but as necessary cocoons for recovery and gathering strength. For them, the invasion was a regional skirmish, a tempest in a teacup.
The true storm, they knew, was still gathering. It was the coming Great Cleansing, a prophesied reckoning that would sweep across all realms and determine the fate of every living being. Engaging fully in the current war would mean expending precious resources, revealing hidden cards, and most dangerously, entangling themselves in the immediate karma of the conflict. Through divination and an understanding of fate, many believed that those entangled in this war’s causality would find it impossible to navigate the larger cataclysm to come.
Furthermore, their ability to intervene was often severely limited. Some existed only as remnant souls, their consciousness barely clinging to existence, sustained solely by the unique laws of their Forbidden Zone. To step outside was to risk utter dissolution. Others, like the two seemingly whimsical old men within the Void God Realm, were themselves fractured—their spirits, will, and physical bodies imprisoned and sealed across different lands, struggling even for their own freedom. For them, "helping" was not a choice they could physically make. Their inaction was a function of tragic circumstance, not a lack of will.
Finally, the tactical reality was brutally simple. The Other Realm fought with overwhelming and ruthless efficiency. They wielded tools like the Origin Ancient Artifact, capable of threatening immortal kings, and they never fought fair, preferring to gang up on single opponents with multiple Buxiu Zhi Wang (不朽之王), their equivalent of immortal kings. Their secret arts were specifically designed to counter the Immortal Ancient cultivation system. A solitary powerhouse emerging from a Forbidden Zone would be like a lone tree facing a hurricane—heroic, but ultimately doomed to fall. Without unity, any intervention would lead to piecemeal destruction.
